


she's gonna save me, call me baby, run her hands through my hair

by okayantigone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canto Bight, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Princess Rey (Star Wars), Sith Rey, Soulmates, wedding fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24239821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: the master of the knights of ren and the princess of the new galactic empire on the night before their wedding, almost healed, almost happy, completely in love.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	she's gonna save me, call me baby, run her hands through my hair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainbowshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/gifts).



“you sure you’re not gonna change your mind, kid? cause i will be right there with the falcon in a heartbeat, if you just say the word,” han solo’s face in the holo is a delicate blue. there’s more wrinkles than kylo remembers.

“it’s a bit late to be changing my mind now,” he says. “the wedding is tomorrow.”

“kessel run. 17 parsecs,” han says.

not for the first time, kylo reminds himself that this is why his parents’ marriage had fallen apart to begin with. reminds himself he was a casualty of it. it’s not han’s fault.

“thanks,” he says instead. “i’ve got to go now. it’s my bachelor party.”

he hadn’t wanted one. really. he hadn’t. but then phasma had _insisted,_ and armitage wanted to blow the hux fortune at the canto bight baccarat tables, so he was, in fact, getting a bachelor party. rey had laughed at him all the way to his shuttle. he was angry with her, just a little, for that. he’d mouthed “save me” at her, dramatically, and she’d straight up ignored him. stone cold. which is the way he liked her.

“stay safe, kid,” han said, unnecessarily.

“you too,” kylo said, very necessarily.

he ended the call. he tried to picture rey on qi-ra’s space yacht, getting primed and pruned for the wedding. for him. the first sith wedding since revan and bastila, a palpatine and a skywalker, making galactic history. it sounded a lot more ominous than what it was, which was, but necessary in the way vaccines are necessary. a prince of the new republic, and … empress-regnant of the new empire. darth sidious thought so anyway, and kylo knew that the man who knows better than darth sidious had not been born just yet. he meditated until his mind physically departed his mortal body, and he still didn’t have the same powers of foresight. he might get lucky once in a while, and get a flash of the winning fathier’s name at the races, but that was useless for anything besides lining hux’s pockets.

he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

when he opened them, all he could see was rey.

“you clean up well,” she said. she was leaning back in a green marble bath tub, her hair piled on top of her head.

“thanks,” he said, and then, because she was naked, and he was brave, added “you too.”

she splashed the white scented water at him.

“you’re going to spend a night drinking with your friends. what are you scared of?” her gold eyes were focused intently on him, like she was trying to read his mind, which he knew damn well she couldn’t possibly be doing, because they promised each other they wouldn’t.

“i’m not scared,” he said reflexively. and then, “they’re not my friends.”

“okay,” she said, but he knew she was laughing at him. he loved her with a love so big and impossible, it threatened to choke him down some days. he missed her, and ached for her with a desperation he hadn’t known. before rey, he’d been a starving man, who’d never known the taste of food.

“what are you up to?” he asked.

“pampering,” rey said. “girl talk.”

“yeah? not planning to leave me at the altar?”

“i wouldn’t tell you if i was.”

“that makes sense. then i’d have no choice but to marry your grandfather.”

she lets out a startled shriek of laughter tinged with indignation. “i wish so _badly_ that i could unhear the words you just heard.”

“i wish i could unsay them, frankly,” he says, but he’s smiling – he knows he is, because it pulls uncomfortably at his scar.

her eyes are so full of warmth when she smiles back, it almost knocks him off his feet. the gold is like a thousand suns, and he, who has always been a creature of the shadows, feels so welcome in it, warm and desperate all at once, to drink all her sunlight in.

“qi-ra’s brought the wine. you – go. and i’ll see you tomorrow.”

“i’ll be there,” he says. _i won’t leave you_ , he wants to say. _no one will ever abandon you again, least of all me_ , he wants to say.

“i’ll be the one in the obnoxiously big dress,” rey promises.

“i’ll be the creature in the mask.”

she waves at someone out of his vision, and with a final wink in his general direction, ends their conversation.

he is left standing alone in the middle of the imperial suite at canto bight, listening to the soundtrack of hux’s incessant rapping on his door. he stops to look at himself, briefly, in the mirror. he hates his reflection, normally. he’s always been an ugly, odd-looking creature, and with the scar bisecting his face, the situation really hadn’t improved. even so, no one really knew who he was behind the mask. tonight, he was just an anonymous member of the new imperial high command, and that was exactly who he wanted to be. though there certainly had been _revelries_ with his knights, as kylo ren celebrated his engagement… tonight was not that kind of party.

hux is standing outside, dressed in the recent naboo fashions, with a lot of white flowing silk and golds that suit his fair skin and crimson hair. a lot of young men are about to lose their heads over the handsome grand admiral tonight. he’s leaning on his cane lightly, but kylo can’t tell if it’s drink or a bad pain day. phasma, stood a little ways behind him, is a marvel in a delicate chainmail dress. she looks fierce and dangerous, and her face is pleasantly flushed. the good life agrees with them. it agrees with kylo too.

he can’t ever remember being happier.

-

“you sure you’re not gonna change your mind?” qi-ra asks on the third bottle of the sweet blue wine, while a twi-lek attendant is laying heated lava stones on their backs, and the incense is burning thick in the air. the sensation reminds rey of laying flat on her back on the warm sand of jakku, staring up at the sun, and waiting for her parents to return.

“a bit too late for that now, isn’t it?” she asks instead. qi-ra regards her carefully. if rey had the experience to be able to tell, she’d say the older woman looks motherly.

“we could turn this yacht around right now. we’ll be in the outer rim, maraudering small cargo ships, and being space pirates for the rest of our lives, if this isn’t what you want.”

she sounds so, so painfully earnest. rey loves her, in that moment, like a mother.

“i don’t want to leave,” she says, and means it. “i want this. i’ve never wanted anything more in my life. i finally know who i am, i know who my family is, and i know my place in the galaxy, and kylo… makes everything so easy. even on the days when it’s hard.” she says the last part softly, almost a whisper. she hates admitting that it’s hard sometimes. she’d waited for this for so long. had wanted, yearned, prayed, raged… and now that she had it, what right did she have to find it hard?

she’d lived through every little orphan girl’s dream. to find out that she was a princess. to be rescued by a handsome knight. sometimes, all she has to do is remember the way the crimson of his saber reflected in the cracked visor of his mask, where he’d stood, an image of strength and power.

he’d gotten on one knee, extended his saber to her, handle first. “i’m so sorry i’m late,” he’d said, voice distorted through the voice coder. and she’d known, in that instant, that he was the boy she’d always dreamed of, made real, with nothing but darkness on his side.

“you came for me,” is what she’d said. a perpetual surprise, that stayed in her voice each morning when she woke up in her bed, and found him there, beside her, sitting up against the pillows, reading, or meditating.

she tries not to think about him too hard. she doesn’t want to accidentally open the connection and ruin his fun. for all his pouting, he’s awfully fond of phasma and hux, and while they’ll never be truly friends to her, she appreciates their loyalty to him.

“that’s how you keep an empire,” grandfather would say. “you keep the people loyal, happy, entertained. and you keep the military on your side. or remove them.”

like he’d removed the jedi.

sometimes she wonders if she has what it takes, to be like him. to exercise that same quiet ruthlessness, and kill people if she has to, or order them killed or –

but she knows she does. because every time she falters in her resolve, when the dark side feels too hard to reach to, all she has to do is remember the wall of her room on jakku, scratched with the lines of her impossible waiting, and knows she is capable of anything, because she is a survivor, and because she chose this life, and now she must pay the price of protecting it, and keeping it. she will not be abandoned again.

“if they won’t love you. make them too afraid to leave you,” grandfather had said in one of his many lessons.

“stop reading my mind,” she’d said.

“i don’t have to. it’s all written on your face. but he won’t leave. where would he go?”

she wakes up sometimes breathless with fear, as though some great serpent is curling on her chest, and grapples at his side of the bed, until she makes contact with his arm or chest or back, and knows he hasn’t returned to parents who are still alive, who would – maybe not easily, but willingly – welcome him back.

when she finally admitted it to him, after weeks of his quiet worry for her restlessness being a pressure at the back of her mind through their bond, he’s stared at her, incredulous.

“you know they abandoned me too, don’t you?” he’d said, when he’d regained his composure. he’d taken in a deep breath, and opened his mind up to her, so she could see the memories for herself. he never hid from her.

“you know you can take whatever you want,” he’d told her once, simply, plainly. “everything – i mean this. everything i have. everything i am – it’s yours. forever.”

some nights he’s the one who wakes up, with a choked scream at the back of his throat, tearing his hands down his face, clawing at his scar. he dreams of jedi master luke skywalker, standing over his bed in the sinister green glow of his lightsaber, having deemed him too broken to live. he doesn’t have to tell her this, because she can read it in his eyes, the day she asks what color saber he thinks would suit her. her grandfather thinks a traditional red would do bdst. kylo just studies her carefully, and finally says, “not green,” like it resolves everything.

qi’ra tops her glass up again.

“as long as you’re sure,” she says. she’s smiling in that gentle way again, that makes rey ache in the deepest, most shameful part of her heart, that will forever turn around and grasp at the arms of a faceless woman shoving her away and down into the sand.

instead of answering, rey closes her eyes, and submerges herself fully under the water of the pool-sized tub, blowing bubbles up into the surface. qi-ra laughs somewhere above her.


End file.
